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On the road with Kerouac's daughter

It was the day after April Fools' Day, 1987. I was attending my first Franco-American colloquium at the University of Maine, Orono, and I was nervous because I knew few people and some of them were speaking French, the native language I had abandoned in childhood.

Outside, the sky had cleared after a rain, snowmelt and flooding.

Then I saw her - about 35, jet-black hair, fair skin with a few freckles, a beauty and allure that went beyond the mere physical. Something clicked in my head. Later, my friend and travel companion, Bob Perreault, said he had felt it too. We wanted to save her, from what we did not know.

The woman was Jan Kerouac, Jack Kerouac's daughter by Joan Haverty, the second wife of the Beat Generation icon. The couple divorced when Joan was pregnant with Jan. Jack denied the child was his until a blood test confirmed his parentage. The resemblance between father and daughter was unmistakable.

The next morning, Bob and I were hanging out at the log home of Yvon Labbé, one of the organizers of the colloquium. Jan was there. Clearing skies made us all frisky.

Bob and I found a canoe in the shed and we loaded it in the back of my pickup. We drove with Jan Kerouac to Route 43 in Alton where the road was flooded. I took Jan for a ride in the canoe on the flooded road. Bob took pictures with his 35mm camera.

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"I love making up words, I love words," Jan said. She paused for a second, shifting in the canoe. I was afraid we were going over. "Writing is hard for me. I never had any real education. My mother moved us around a lot. We were on welfare. We didn't have any money. I was 6 and stole from the church poor box. I thought it was for us because we needed it. I never went to college."

"You can get an education by reading on your own," I said.

"Reading is a strain for me. Sometimes I hallucinate when I read." She spoke her words in a matter-of-fact tone. She looked to me as if she were stoned.

"You still use drugs?" I asked.

"I gave up heroin. It's bad stuff." She put her hand in the water, and the canoe did a whoopsy daisy. My breath caught with anxiety, but Jan's face brightened for the first time. "That water is cold," she said.

"I only saw my father twice, when I was a little girl and when I was 15. My boyfriend and I popped in on him in Lowell. He said I could use his name if I ever published anything. We had to leave because his mother got upset. I was pregnant. I lost the baby in Mexico. I've had five miscarriages since."

We were back at the colloquium that afternoon. Somebody remarked that Jack Kerouac was a bastard for the way he treated his daughter, his only child. Jan got up and walked out of the hall. I never saw her again.

She published one more book, and she was working on a novel when she died of complications from kidney failure. Like her father, she was only in her 40s at the time of her death.

I couldn't get into Jan Kerouac's books. They were apprentice works. It was obvious she had talent, but she needed somebody to show her the way. It never happened.

Ernest Hebert is a professor of English at Dartmouth College.

A version of this article appears in print on November 16, 2008, in The International Herald Tribune. Today's Paper|Subscribe